Protesters yell as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, not shown, tries to speak during a press conference on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program, in San Francisco. Pelosi said Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017, that she respects young immigrants who shouted her down at an event in San Francisco, but said their call for a comprehensive immigration overhaul was premature. Instead, lawmakers must focus on protecting young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, Pelosi said. (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, File)

“For a long time, we’ve been fighting the fight for the Dreamers,” she tried to interject.

“We are not Dreamers!” some shouted back, drowning her out and forcing the news conference to end in chaos.

Young and undocumented, yes. Just don’t call them “Dreamers.”

That moniker, say many undocumented youth, has helped create a narrative of the “good immigrant vs. the bad immigrant,” pitting younger, better-educated immigrants against other unauthorized immigrants – especially their parents.

As the Obama-era DACA protective program for undocumented youth nears its end, many of those who have been helped by the program insist they do not want to be pawns in a political debate over who should stay and who should go.

“We will not be bargaining chips for Trump’s agenda,” said Adrian Reyna, an Oakland resident and a leader in United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization.

Not everybody protected by DACA agrees with the tactics of the protesters at Pelosi’s news conference. Social media has buzzed in recent days with debate between those who thought it a necessary call to arms, and others who viewed it as disrespectful to a reliable ally.

But what immigrant-rights advocates do agree on is this: They want Congress to adopt a “clean” DREAM Act law that would pave the way for citizenship for those brought illegally to the U.S. as youngsters. They don’t want that law to include language that will help deport more of the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally, or funding that would help build a border wall.

As Reyna put it: “We want to make sure our community is not thrown under the bus.”

‘The imagery of the cap and gown’

President Donald Trump is phasing out DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Obama created by executive order in 2012.

The program was meant to be a temporary measure to provide relief from deportation, with a work permit, to people brought into the country illegally before the age of 16 and who meet other criteria.

Nearly 800,000 people signed up for the two-year renewable permits, which comes with a Social Security number and other benefits. (Oct. 5 is the deadline for the last renewal application.)

Recipients are commonly referred to as “Dreamers,” a term that dates back to failed attempts in Congress since 2001 to pass a law called the DREAM Act, an acronym for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors.

While the proposed laws have varied some, the basic idea is the same – provide a pathway to legal residency and then citizenship for people brought to the country before they the age of 18 and who complete high school and then either move on to a higher education institution or enlist in the U.S. military.

“A lot of Dream teams popped up on college campuses after 2001,” said Kevin Solis, a spokesman for Dream Team LA, which represents undocumented youth in the Los Angeles area.

“There was the imagery of the cap and gown, which we cultivated,” Solis said. “It was even on our original logo.”

Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, an immigration attorney in northern California and a DACA recipient himself, said that when he first started in the immigrant rights movement, the portrayal of the deserving young immigrants helped “win the sympathies of the country and of Democrats.”

“For a long time, we were saying, ‘We’re exceptional, we’re deserving. We’re the good immigrants,'” Reyes Savalza said.

But immigration reform, long promised and a potential get during a window in which Democrats controlled both chambers and the presidency, never came to pass.

Ivan Ceja, a DACA recipient, is the founder of UndocuMedia, which was launched in 2012 to disseminate information, through various forms of media, about legislation that addresses the undocumented community. Los Angeles. “We are no longer those cute little Dreamers who wear the caps and gowns,” Ceja said in an interview with the Southern California News Group. “We’re grown up. We’re critically assessing the situation.” (Photo by John McCoy, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., waits as protesters yell during a press conference on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program, on Monday, Sept. 18, 2017 in San Francisco. Several dozen young immigrants shouted down Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House, on Monday during an event in San Francisco, following her recent conversations with President Donald Trump over the future of a program that grants many of them legal status. (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Sound

“Even before Trump, we were already seeing a divide in our community of those who are (described as) deserving and those who are not. We didn’t want to play into that,” said one of the group’s leaders, Faby Jacome. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Mitzie Perez, a DACA recipient and immigrant rights organizer from San Dimas, said Trump’s arrival in the White House signaled a shift in the way young, undocumented people seek to control their future in this country. “I think when the Trump administration came into office, it was very clear that everyone was going to be a (deportation) priority,” Perez said.

“We made a connection, our narrative of good, deserving immigrants had played into Obama’s rhetoric of deporting felons, not families; deport felons, not dreamers,” Reyes Savalza said.

“We reached the point where we said, ‘We will not be complicit in that narrative,'” he added.

That meant changes in the way DACA protectees communicated their message. In Orange County, for example, the Dream Team changed its name to the Orange County Immigrant Youth United.

“Even before Trump, we were already seeing a divide in our community of those who are (described as) deserving and those who are not. We didn’t want to play into that,” said one of the group’s leaders, Faby Jacome.

Other advocacy groups, as they sprouted in California and across the nation, avoided the word “Dreamer,” using names that incorporated the word “youth” or some variation of “undocumented.”

“People like to say that Dreamers are the most deserving. I beg to differ,” said Denae Joseph, 23, a DACA recipient who recently graduated from UCLA.

“The reality is, we’re not going to get anything if we don’t stand in solidarity with one another,” said Joseph, an organizer with the UndocuBlack Network, a group that advocates for black undocumented immigrants.

The concept of the achieving Dreamer, “ended up dividing, whether consciously or not, people into categories, those with an education versus those who are working,” said Jorge Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles.

“In the past few years, more young people became conscious of the danger of that word, especially to their parents,” he added. “You don’t hear parents referred to as ‘dreamers,’ and they were the original ‘dreamers.’”

Some of the oft-repeated language – by politicians, media and even some advocates – is also rejected by many.

“This line (that) ‘they were brought to this country of no fault of their own’ implies it’s their parents’ fault. They reject that,” said Kent Wong, executive director of the of the UCLA Labor Center, which includes a Dream Resource Center.

‘No longer those cute little Dreamers’

The protest at Pelosi’s news conference created a stir for several reasons.

Advocates were angry that she and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) met privately with Trump to iron out a deal for DACA recipients.

The agreement included “a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement afterward. Trump immediately denied it. “No deal was made,” the president tweeted, adding “massive border security” would be included.

Then came the San Francisco protest. And, hours later, Pelosi told reporters that she also wants a “clean” bill with no attachments.

Meanwhile, there is debate as to whether the protesters were also demanding the much bigger package of comprehensive immigration reform, a goal that would be much harder to achieve in today’s political climate. As they yelled “You are a liar” at Pelosi, the protesters held up a huge sign demanding “Fight 4 All 11 million” and chanted “All of us, or none of us.”

But that message wasn’t necessarily a specific request, said Reyes Savalza, the immigration attorney with DACA status, who was among those who disrupted Pelosi’s news conference.

“At no point did we say we wanted comprehensive immigration reform,” Reyes Savalza said. “What we want is a clean Dream Act that doesn’t sacrifice our parents in the process.”

Compton resident Ivan Ceja, 25, also was at the Pelosi news conference. He is a DACA recipient and executive director of UndocuMedia, a media platform used to inform and advocate for immigrants.

Recently, Ceja went on the Fox Channel Tucker Carlson show, where the conservative commentator took him to task.

“You are not a U.S. citizen. The U.S. government exists to serve the needs and protect the needs of U.S. citizens. It does not exist to protect the needs of non-U.S. citizens. … Why do you have a right to demand anything?” Carlson asked him.

Ceja told him undocumented immigrants pay taxes, contribute to the community and are constituents. They don’t want to be left out of the conversation, including talks on DACA.

“We are no longer those cute little Dreamers who wear the caps and gowns,” Ceja said in an interview with the Southern California News Group.

UC Riverside professor Francisco Pedraza, a political scientist who focuses on immigration and race, said this week’s protest and rhetoric is “totally normal, and totally within the bounds of what’s politically appropriate.”

“What’s been very clear is that you can’t just sit back and wait for policy change to happen on its own,” he added. “They’re trying to petition their government for grievance.”

Mitzie Perez, a DACA recipient and immigrant rights organizer from San Dimas, said Trump’s arrival in the White House signaled a shift in the way young, undocumented people seek to control their future in this country.

“I think when the Trump administration came into office, it was very clear that everyone was going to be a (deportation) priority,” Perez said.

“That’s why we are taking steps to not only ensure the safety of the 800,000 people that are going to be phased out … but also protecting the rest of the community.”

Under a proposed Dream Act of 2017, the non-profit Migration Policy Institute estimates that nearly 3.4 million people would meet the minimum requirements to stay in the United States, and a smaller number, 1.5 million, would be expected to meet the educational and other requirements to attain legal permanent residence: a green card that could later lead to citizenship.

Young vs. Younger

In the world of undocumented youth, there are those who lived as teens and young adults without DACA, and those who entered high school as “DACAmented.”

The younger ones, who didn’t go through the struggle and political pressures that led Obama to create the program, are more comfortable with the word “Dreamer” and less comfortable with the more aggressive tactics, immigrant-rights advocates said.

“The questions and concerns about our actions came from young undocumented youth whose anxieties and fears are real and legitimate,” said Reyes Savalza, who at 28 considers himself an elder in the movement.

Solis, of the Dream Team LA, said: “We see a difference between post-DACA and pre-DACA activists.”

Cejas said the younger DACA recipients, those in middle school, high school and perhaps just a bit older, are “panicked, stressed and anxious” as DACA and its relief from potential deportation draws to an end.

“The younger generation never had to advocate for themselves,” he said.

Alejandra Molina writes about immigration, race, and religion for the Southern California News Group. In her decade-long career, she has reported how gentrification has affected downtown Santa Ana, how racism contributes the high black infant death rate, and how President Donald Trump is impacting undocumented communities across Southern California.

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